


searching for anything and everything to make you feel whole

by sxldato



Category: Death Note
Genre: Alcohol, Bad Decisions, Cocaine, Drugs, Gross, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nausea, New York Mafia, Pills, Polyamory, Poor Life Choices, Self Confidence Issues, VERY brief mention of heroin, Vomiting, you all saw those tags coming lbr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 20:47:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3543284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxldato/pseuds/sxldato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During all his years as a street-rat, nobody ever told him not to mix drugs and alcohol.</p>
            </blockquote>





	searching for anything and everything to make you feel whole

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS GROSS PLEASE LOVE ME  
> this is also a test just for me personally because i tweaked a thing, and i want to see if that affects the number of hits/kudos for this fic  
> i haven't written gross death note shit in a really long time so this was exciting!! and horribly disgusting but that was the goal  
> i also felt really terrible yesterday and i was stuck in a bathroom stall at my school and if that was karma biting me in the ass then i don't know what it was BUT I DIDN'T PUKE. I AM THE APEX PREDATOR FIGHT ME  
> i've never written rod before but i needed to write something where he's mello's Big Bara Boyfriend because jesus christ can you imagine rod fucking up anyone who tries to mess with mello but is also so gentle with mello and is just a giant teddy bear when it comes to him??? i cry  
> unbeta'd because. why  
> title is from "Holy" by PVRIS which is a rockin song and fits mello to a T and y'all should go listen to it

His rule of thumb when he went out was that he didn’t use the bathrooms at whatever club or bar he ended up in. Bathrooms were used for shooting up, for sex, or for beating the hell out of a guy who ratted you out for dealing coke that one time three months ago.

But tonight was a bad night, and sometimes you had to suck it up and let your knees hit that disgusting tile floor.

If he said he hadn’t touched anything before, he’d be lying through his teeth. He didn’t fuck with serious stuff like meth or heroin, and he stayed far away from the shady Ziploc bags that sleazy men dealt out on the street corners. They mix stuff into that and he knew it could fuck up just about anybody, no matter how used to drugs your body was.

He’d done a few lines of coke, sure. The caviar of street drugs? He was _all_ over that. And maybe he got a little twitchy about wanting more whenever he did it, but he never let himself succumb to that urge. That was weakness, that was allowing himself to have a crutch, and he refused to stoop to that level. So he dealt instead, took advantage of other people’s crutches. And when people couldn’t pay, they would suck him off in back alleys or tuck lace panties in his back pockets. Everybody loved him because he never screwed them over with fake shit, or changed prices, or hassled them if they wanted to quit. He made an honest living in an illegal business, and he wasn’t a dick about it.

He was also well aware of the fact he was devastatingly beautiful, which couldn’t be said for any of the other dealers around. It must have felt nice, he supposed, to take poison from a pretty face. Was it wrong to use his good looks and other people’s weaknesses for money? That was a possibility. At this point in his life, though, he couldn’t really bring himself to care.

He’d been doing this since he was fifteen. He’d lasted four years without fucking up. But he was sure as hell making up for that tonight.

Somebody had been handing out pills, and Rod—who rarely did drugs—had popped two into his mouth like they were skittles. _That_ had captured his attention.

“Hey, Mello.” It was a familiar face, but not familiar enough for Mello to remember his name. “You wanna have a go?”

Mello set down his martini, circling his finger around the rim of the glass, trying to look bored even though he was curious. “What is it?”

“Lithium,” Rod said. He was sitting next to Mello with one big arm around his shoulders. Mello liked it when he did that; his touch wasn’t too firm or too overbearing like one might expect.

“And the effects?” He wasn’t about to try something without even knowing what it was.

“It’s a mood stabilizer. Makes everything go fuzzy, feels like you're floating. And for somebody as high strung as you…” His hand moved to Mello’s leg, just a little too close to his inner thigh to be seen as a friendly touch, and Mello liked how it felt. “Who knows? Maybe it’ll help you take a load off for a while.”

Mello looked at Rod, then at the guy with the pills. Just one try, one pill, one night—that couldn’t hurt. “Yeah, okay.”

He held the pill between his thumb and forefinger as he took hold of Rod’s jaw with his other hand, opening the larger man’s mouth and placing the pill on his tongue. He tasted like bar peanuts and smelled like cologne when Mello kissed him, but it wasn’t unpleasant. The pill transferred from Rod’s tongue to Mello’s, and Mello let it slip down his throat before pulling back.

“You’ve never taken pills, have you?” Rod asked.

“I’ve never done much of anything,” Mello answered. “I did coke a few times when I was younger, but now I only deal.”

Rod grinned. “Then you’re in for one hell of a ride, kid.”

-

The drug didn’t take long to set in. It started off well—the fuzziness made it feel like he was covered in a large quilt. He was able to feel things, but without the sharpness or clarity. The colored lights were blurred in his vision, and he settled back against Rod’s arm, taking occasional sips from his martini as he watched the night take action in front of him.

It started going south when the world suddenly slammed into a forty-five degree angle. It was like when you dream of falling, and you wake up feeling like you’ve hit the concrete. Something was very wrong, and fear stirred in his chest.

He closed his eyes against the waves of dizziness sweeping over him and rested his head against Rod’s chest.

“You okay?”

“Dizzy,” Mello slurred. The world spun around him, and the steady rhythm of Rod’s heartbeat was keeping him calm. “Those pills—something was wrong with them…”

“How much of that martini did you have before the pill?”

“That was my second.”

Rod stilled. “You don’t mix booze with pills, babe. How’d you not know that?”

His breathing was speeding up and he desperately tried to control it. “What’s gonna happen to me?”

“I don’t know. Just try and relax. There’s not much we can do now.”

The bar felt stuffy; all the smells were amplified and the vertigo was getting worse. He put his hand on Rod’s shoulder to push himself to his feet. “’M gonna… ‘m gonna get some air…”

“You need somebody to go with you?”

“No, no, I’ll—“ His knees buckled and he gripped the edge of the table for support. “I’m fine, I’ll be fine.”

“Mello—“

“Jesus Christ, Rod, I said I’m _fine_ ,” Mello snapped, clenching his fists so the trembling in his hands would be harder to see. Admitting he wasn’t okay was admitting that he’d fucked up, and he wasn’t about to do that. “Just lay off, alright?”

He hadn’t lied. He really wanted to get out of there; he couldn’t breathe through the heavy heat created by the teeming mass of bodies. He’d lost sight of Rod in the crowd and the exit was nowhere to be found. Then his stomach turned over and he bit back the urge to gag. He took half a second to choke back the taste of bile at the back of his throat, to see if he could get through this with dignity, but then his stomach flipped again and he ran for the bathrooms.

He’d made a promise to himself, he remembered as he shouldered the door open so he could keep his hands over his mouth. He’d promised he’d never get this low. He couldn’t even keep the promises he made to himself.

He thought he saw a guy sitting on one of the sinks and slipping a needle into his forearm, and there might have been someone getting blown in the corner, but he couldn’t be sure. Everything was a haze, and he was slamming into one of the stalls before he could really take in his surroundings.

The floor was dirty, but he knelt anyways because he’d collapse and crack his skull open on the toilet seat if he didn’t. Beads of sweat jumped out on his forehead and the back of his neck, and he pressed the back of his wrist to his mouth as he gagged. His boots scraped against the floor as he pushed himself over the bowl, dry heaving and coughing into the water. There was so little in his stomach; it was going to be hard for anything to come up on its own.

“Fuck…” Mello groaned, absolutely dreading the idea, but knowing it was a quick and simple solution to a very painful problem.

With a shaking hand, he pressed two thin fingers down on his tongue, forcing them to the back of his throat. He gagged and gagged, and it was only when he began wondering if this was actually going to work that his stomach’s contents made a violent reappearance. He didn’t even have time to get his fingers out of his mouth, and he vomited over his hand and into the cold, uncaring water. He moved his hand to the top of the curve of the seat and let his puke-covered fingers droop over the side. This reprieve was brief; a few seconds passed and he was vomiting again. Dark, thick fluid coated his throat and dripped slowly past his lips, and he decided that chocolate was definitely a contender for one of the worst things to puke up.

If there were other people in the bathroom when he came in, they had surely left by now, because no one wants to shoot up heroin or get their dick sucked while listening to some poor asshole puking up his lungs. So instead of pulling himself together, he let out a low whimper and coiled his clean arm around his torso. He didn’t want to move, didn’t even want to reach over to get toilet paper so he could get the puke off his hand. He was dizzy, and nausea was still coming at him in waves, and he was so fucking _tired_.

Chills swept up and down his spine as he sat there, making him tremble in a way that was stomach-churning. Even in this state, he tried to work through the pros and cons of passing out here. The pros were the actual act of sleeping, not having to deal with the pain, and forgetting this awful situation. The cons were the possibility of ending up lying on the floor and choking on his own puke, having some sleazy guy take advantage of him while he was unconscious, and not waking up.

The cons kind of outweighed the pros, so he struggled to keep his eyes open.

He might have been there for fifteen minutes and he might have been there for two hours when he heard the door swing open.

“Mello?”

It was Rod. He was so fucked. “No,” he moaned, hating how hoarse his voice was. “Stop, go away.”

“I’m not leaving you here. What do you take me for?”

“A guy who will leave me the fuck alone when I ask him to,” Mello said weakly. “I don’t want you seeing me like this… _Please_ , Rod, just—“

The latch on the stall door rattled and then unlocked, and the door was gently pushed open. Mello looked over his shoulder to see Rod’s hulking form standing in the entrance, looking tremendously concerned.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Mello muttered.

“I’m taking you home.”

“You don’t have my apartment keys, you fucking walnut.”

“Yeah, but _you_ have your keys, and I’m taking you home.”

“Can you even drive right now? You took those pills, too.”

“Yeah, and they wore off. Now we’re leaving.”

“You can’t _make_ me go anywhere.”

He’d forgotten that Rod, who was roughly the size of a bear, _could_ make Mello go wherever the hell he wanted. Rod nudged Mello away from the toilet bowl, but not before asking whether Mello was done (to which Mello responded with an uneven shrug and a very slurred “I dunno”), and helped Mello to his feet. He washed his hands at the sinks and splashed some cold water on his face, all while leaning heavily against the shitty porcelain. He tried his hardest not to look at himself in the mirror. He knew his hair was damp with sweat, and he knew he was sickly pale and clammy, and he didn’t want to look at himself when he was like that. He didn’t want to see how badly he’d fucked up.

“You ready, Mello?”

“I can’t walk.”

Rod immediately bristled. “Did someone—“

“No, no! Oh, god, no.” Mello cringed at the thought. “My ass is fine. It’s my legs—they feel like noodles or some shit.”

Rod thought for a solid five seconds, and then-- “I’m gonna carry you.”

“What—wait, Rod, _no_ —“ And then he was being scooped up bridal-style in two big beefy arms, Rod holding him like he weighed nothing.

“There’s a back door. Nobody’ll see me carrying you if we go out that way.”

“What if I throw up on you?”

“You’re not gonna throw up on me,” Rod said.

“But what if I _do_?” Mello wasn’t sure why this was his biggest concern; maybe it was something small and pointless, something he could focus on that didn’t make him so scared.

“Then it’s fine.”

He would never admit it, but being carried all the way to Rod’s car felt really, really nice. The fabric of his suit jacket was soft against his cheek, and he was barely bouncing at all as Rod walked. Pain was radiating through his temples and throbbing behind his eyes, but the night air was cool when they stepped outside and it was soothing against his fevered skin.

“I’ve hit rock bottom,” Mello said dully as Rod opened the car door and slid him into shotgun. “I’ve never been this low in my whole life.”

“You told me the first two weeks you were a runaway, you were homeless,” Rod reminded him, walking around to the driver’s seat. “You’re telling me a bad trip is worse than that?”

“You don’t get it,” Mello snapped, feeble anger surging up in him. “I was a kid, I was on my own for the first time in my life—it was the greatest decision I ever made. I didn’t care if I was homeless. I was fucking _free_. But now…” He leaned back against the headrest. The worthlessness he felt was almost crushing, and he wanted to burst into tears. “Now it’s just a different prison, different rules. And you don’t understand because you don’t _have_ to catch Kira. You don’t have to prove yourself to anybody; you don’t have to make a dead man or a selfish god proud of you. You’ve got no ties.”

Rod had sat in the driver’s seat the whole time, listening quietly. Then he stuck the key in the ignition, the car revved up, and he said, “I think I’ve got at least one.”

“The mafia, yeah, but—“

“I was actually talking about you.”

Even in his muddled brain, those words resonated with him, striking him to his very bones. But he couldn’t piece together all his jumbled thoughts to create a sentence that would remotely express how he felt.

He supposed Rod understood, because he was smiling that sideways smile and looking back out at the road as he drove. He asked nothing of Mello—he never asked anything of him, never told him to change, only took him as he was and all the shit that came with that-- and let the silence hang between them like stars that weren’t in the sky tonight.

-

Mello’s apartment was up three long flights of stairs, and Mello insisted that he could walk them on his own, but on the third step he stumbled and Rod had to catch him so he wouldn’t nail his chin on the metal stair.

“Classy moment,” he managed, not even complaining as Rod took him in his arms again.

“Give yourself some credit,” Rod said as he ascended the stairs. “At least you didn’t get puke on your clothes.”

“You’re funny.”

Rod put Mello down at the apartment door so Mello could fumble for his keys and let himself in.

“Is this the other guy you told me about?” Rod asked, motioning to the man sprawled out on the couch.

“Yeah, he always tries to wait up for me.” Mello walked over to the sleeping figure on buckling knees and shook him awake. “Matt—Matt, I’m back.”

Matt stirred and blinked up at him. “Hey— _woah_ , you—“

“Look like shit,” Mello finished. “I’m aware, thanks.”

“What happened?” Matt sat up and his eyes landed on Rod, who looked just as confused as he did. “Who’s that?”

“That’s Rod.”

“ _That’s_ Rod?”

“He brought me home. I don’t want to talk about it.” Nausea still clenched his stomach and everything felt slightly off-kilter, and explaining it all would only make him feel worse. “I just wanted to let you know I was home so you didn’t worry.”

“Well, thanks.” Matt got to his feet. “I’m gonna hit the hay—I guess I was already hitting the hay, but that was like, the pre-hay. You’ll let me know if you need anything during the night, yeah?”

Mello nodded.

“Cool, okay.” Matt leaned over and gently kissed Mello on the cheek, then looked over at Rod. It seemed like he was sizing Rod up, seeing whether he stood a chance if Rod started throwing punches. “It’s, uh—it’s nice to finally meet you, I guess.”

Rod waited until the bedroom door was shut before he turned to Mello and said, “He’s kind of weird.”

“We’ve known each other for over a decade,” Mello said. “Nothing he says or does really bothers me anymore.” He hadn’t realized he’d been swaying until Rod reached over to steady him. “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

“Do you want me to stay with you?”

“No, no, I—I have Matt, you know?” It was strange, watching the two of them meet each other, but it was stranger talking about one of them with the other. “He takes good care of me, just like you do. But I like being on my own, taking care of myself.”

Rod looked like he wanted to protest, but he didn’t. “If it gets worse, you should go to a hospital.”

“I know.” Mello faltered for a moment, not really knowing what to say next, so he settled on, “thanks, Rod. For taking me home and understanding and—“

“Don’t worry about it,” Rod replied. “You know I’m here whenever you need me.” He bent down to kiss Mello’s forehead and then headed for the door. “I’ll see you.”

“See you,” Mello said, wrapping his arms around himself as he watched Rod leave.

The room spun around him and he didn’t know if he would be able to make it through the rest of the night without getting sick, so he grabbed the ratty blanket off the back of the couch and set up camp in the bathroom, pulling the blanket taut around his shoulders as he curled up on the floor.

He felt bad about it—felt bad for Rod because of Matt, and felt bad for Matt because of Rod, but they seemed to be at an odd impasse. The logic seemed to be that both made Mello happy, so they couldn't be angry at each other. Still, it left Mello feeling shaky and full of sin, like one day he’d have to choose, like one day one or both of them would be ripped away from him.

It was just the pills and the alcohol talking.

He could make himself believe that it was just the pills and the alcohol talking.

**Author's Note:**

> _Yeah you put on a faith facade,_   
>  _Think you're holy when you're not._   
>  _I hate to break it to you baby,_   
>  _But you're simply lost._   
>  _You can right all the wrongs just to feel you belong,_   
>  _But simply calling out sins don't bring you closer to God._   
>  _You're just a ghost at most,_   
>  _A set of empty bones,_   
>  _Searching for anything and everything to make you feel whole,_   
>  _When it gets cold_


End file.
